A little beat up, but Eddie's a wrestler so he can take it. Edwin Bibby was a top English wrestler in the 1880's, and while I can find a lot of references to his famous matches online, I can't seem to track down a proper bio. Here is a great picture of him that was obviously the model for this card. One thing I like about this card is that Edwin had the decency to wear a shirt and there are no nipples. Don't laugh, a lot of these Allen & Ginter cards have nipples on them and it bugs me. I just don't like cards with nipples and it doesn't matter whose nipples they are either. There are actually card sets out there that specialize in nipples, if you catch my drift, and I don't like them either. It's just a pet peeve of mine. I don't mind nipples on photos, paintings, film, murals, statues, television, drawings, pottery or even in real life, just keep them the hell off my cards. To find a wrestling card sans nipples is pretty rare due to the high nipplage quotient usually found in those sets. Edwin is a "Catch As Catch Can" wrestler and I have no earthly idea what that means. The only place I've ever even heard of it before is in the episode of Are You Being Served where Wilberforce Claiborne Humphries fights Jackie "Mr. TV" Pallo.
Here's the back. Not terrible considering, although the extra paper stuck to the corners obscuring the title is a shame. This second series of cards is far more diverse than the first and has new sports not seen in the original series such as tennis, skating and track and field events. There are only six baseball players in this series though, and none are as well known as Anson, Ward, Comiskey and Kelly from the first set. These cards can also be found in an album that was sold as a premium, and the larger size cards in the N43 set. Topps Allen and Ginter used those designs in their N43 and National Pride box topper inserts. They also used the Allen & Ginter design to great effect in conning obsessive A&G collectors like me into buying Topps Heritage Wrestling cards, as you can clearly see below. This set is a wee bit more scarce than the N28s and I got lucky to find this one from cardguru4u for only eight bucks.
No nipples showing on Rik Flair!
1 comment:
Say it with me now...
WHOOOOOOOOO!!!!
"Catch as catch can" is basically an early form of pro wrestling that's grapple-and-submission based. It could mean US carnival-style wrestling, even. It differs from greco roman because there are holds below the waist (HEY-O!).
As always, I remain your resident wrestling nerd.
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